Shoot-'em-ups started innocently enough. Spacewar blasted its way onto computers back in the 1960s, and after Space Invaders was released, the rest was history. Galaga and Galaxian would go on to further popularize the genre,...

Getting invaded sucks. Chances are, you're going to die. There's a reason you're being invaded. The other player is confident in their ability to slaughter you. They are probably nigh impervious to damage and carrying some s...

Remember when I wrote that review and said I fucking hate dinosaurs? I take that statement back. I'm in love with Yoshi in Mario Party 10 -- just look at the fuck-me eyes and seductive tail waggle he gives you when in third ...

This week I was tempted to do all Bloodborne all the time, because we had so many Bloodborne stories go up that got a ton of attention. Instead, I collected them all into one little Bloodball and turned the abundance in...

Religion is not something that is discussed much when talking about videogames, even though many games often feature religious themes and stories based on religious texts. It's difficult to avoid these things, since religion has had such an enormous influence on all cultures, so of course we're going to see it making its way into videogames.

I've always appreciated seeing religious themes in games, even though I'm not religious myself. The folklore is very interesting to learn about, and it's not something I've spent a lot of my time reading up on by myself, so experiencing it in a videogame is about as close as I'm gonna get. Christianity in particular seems to be quite rare in videogames, but there are plenty of quality examples if you know where to look.

Here are a few specific examples of Christianity's influence in videogames:

Experience Points is a series in which I highlight some of the most memorable things about a particular game. These can include anything from a specific scene or moment, a character, a weapon or item, a level or location, a part of the soundtrack, a gameplay mechanic, a line of dialogue, or anything else about the game that is particularly noteworthy and/or awesome.

This series will no doubt contain spoilers for the games being discussed, so keep that in mind if you plan on playing the game for the first time.

This entry is all about Final Fantasy IX. Feel free to share some of your own favorite things about the game in the comments!

This isn't clickbait. This isn't some article cashing in on hypothetical fan art of an Xbox turning into Megatron or a post about those awesome Mega Drive/PlayStation Transformers. This is my life, you fools. I've spent time pouring over this existential question. The world needs to know: what if videogame consoles were Transformers? Here are the Transformers they would be, mostly framed through the IDW comics because those are rad.

There are a lot of weird quirks brought about by existence. One of them is that we all exist in varying relationship to other people, particularly larger than life figures. But larger than life figures aren't even exempt. As ...

H1Z1 is a game about surviving the zombie apocalypse. It should be a game about surviving the bear apocalypse, because they are way fucking scarier than any zombie. But, maybe that hits too close to home since bears migh...

Final Fantasy: All the Bravest was a travesty. It played itself, it was pretty abrasive in its pandering, and the microtransactions were so pushy that it was hard to enjoy it without feeling like you were constantly being sold something.

Final Fantasy: Record Keeper is another free-to-play game in the same vein, but it's a much better effort that doesn't feel straight-up insulting to fans.

Way back in 2009, Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe had this cutting observation about the po-faced nature of military shooters. During a particularly grim scene in Call of Duty: World at War, Brooker flambés several soldiers, only to hit the pause button for a sip of Diet Coke. It was a swift reminder that for all the talk of valour, Call of Duty has always been about playing army men in the backyard. Eventually, it got to a point where serious real world messages sat awkwardly next to hyper-realised spectacles.

And those aiming for the banter of Generation Kill always gave us Navy SEALs instead.

Battlefield: Bad Company was different, though. With a plot lifted straight from Kelly’s Heroes and an attitude more in line with Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H, the boys from B-Company were designed to lampoon and buck the trend. They were cynical, subversive, Machiavellian, and all the more humorous for it. This wasn’t a game about faux-heroics. This was about getting your own reward on your own terms. And by the end of it, you really wanted them to succeed.

Indie developers make some cool as heck games, but they're not always so great at selling them. We want to them work on their pitch game until they're at Bumgarner levels and we want to take advantage of the the horrible, horrible GDC elevators that get gummed up with folks who don't know you're supposed to walk on the left, stand on the right.

Howdy, partners! In a special collaboration with the city slickers over at Devolver Digital, we're gunning for a five-day-long series of live game streams on our Destructoid Twitch account featuring some of the rootinest toot...

Hey, everybody! The Bloodborne embargo has just lifted, and we've already got a review from the lovely Chris Carter. But that's not all! We're also streaming the game live from the Destructoid Twitch account. I'll be mes...

Last week we took a break from the usual poetic news recaps to highlight our favorite games from PAX East, but now we are back in the swing of things. You can check out all of the past episodes on the Game News Haikus YouTub...